Retrofit: Ramayan-Mahabharat re-run

When the Ramayan meets the Mahabharat head on, it explodes in the badlands of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most politically sensitive state with 80 parliamentary seats. A peculiar caste arithmetic and religious calculus drives voting patterns, which enable governments to be formed in this amorphous state. Social engineering models have prevailed in the past as politicos try and zero in on a wide variety of caste factors. Only in the 2014 general election did the majority Hindu vote aggregate behind Narendra Modi for him to bag as many as 71 seats on his own and an additional two seats for his alliance partner Apna Dal. For most part, a unique social and caste calculation controls the flow of votes. While Bihar is even more caste-ridden, UP too has caste and religion acting as a whetstone. In late August this year, a ABP News and Lokniti CSDS pre-poll survey made interesting observations — it broadly pointed out that Muslims and Yadavs could support the SP, upper castes would go with the BJP, and dalit support could go to the BSP with “lower OBCs leaning towards the BJP at the moment”.

It also said that one of the key reasons why the BSP was at third position in the survey was because it was unable to “make a dent in the SP’s Muslim base and create a dalit-Muslim alliance” for its support base. But that was before the house of Yadavs’ deep-set fissures blew up in not just their faces but has now for days become the top-rated soap opera across the political class. Incidentally, in the 2012 Assembly elections, the BSP won 80 out of the 403 seats it contested while the SP won 224 seats and formed the government. Our mythology tells us that Lord Krishna emerged from the Yadav community as he played a centrifugal force in the Mahabharat, siding with the Pandavas over their cousins, the Kauravas. Giving me a heads-up on how the Yadav wars are a throwback to the same mythology was an old colleague, now a dear friend, who asserted how nothing much has changed. Familia is still riven with intrigue, conspiracy theories, plots and sub-plots. The sub-text of anger and vitriol has dominated an antiquated world reeking of a feudal mindset where there are no moral absolutes.

The Ramayan was fashioned when a mother, Kaikeyi (in this case Sadhana, Mulayam’s second wife), wanted her son Bharat (Prateek, Netaji’s son sired by Sadhana) to be installed as Ayodhya Naresh after Dashrath. So she plots Lord Ram’s exile for 14 long years, but Bharat rules in the interregnum using Ram’s slippers perched on the throne. Now this is where the two mythologies criss-cross dangerously, leaving the neo-age Yadavs careening out of control. Netaji Mulayam is Dashrath Naresh and while he may not have acquiesced to Tipuji (Akhilesh’s) exile yet, he has shown enough evidence to suggest that he has fallen into the “parent trap”. Here, instead of one, we may have two Shakunis (Shivpal Yadav and Amar Singh) who are conspiring to unseat Akhilesh. In the world of hi-jinks chacha-bhatija and mama-bhanja rajneeti, Akhilesh has been getting it in the neck. In any case, over these last four and a half years, he was fettered and boxed in by his disparate uncles — both from within the family and outside, namely Azam Khan.

Bereft of authority, Akhilesh could never be his own man, his decision-making hobbled by the antics of his chachas and mamas. The Yadavs, true Luddites front and centre of the political spectrum, have actually imperilled their own political prospects. Shivpal’s naked lust for power and his filial affection for Netaji have added to this comedy of uncles and nephews. In the process, the warring clan has left UP as a dystopian state. Like a reality show, they have hurled abuses at each other, propelled in a way by a secret truth serum. Not realising that at the bottom of the pyramid lies a pool of desperation where everyone’s path cross each other every five years in India. The hustings are the only truth serum where voters blow a gasket and teach the leaders a brutal lesson.

For Akhilesh, there was no room for retreat, as delivering submission in this war of egos would have worked to the detriment of his political future. History always remembers what you did last, for fame has a 15-minute shelf life while infamy lasts a lifetime. Working on this principle, the modern Abhimanyu who rewrites the script and doesn’t die knows fully well that he has secured first-mover advantage in this spat. Shivpal and Amar Singh wanted a public execution, instead they got a rude jolt when Akhilesh didn’t cave in. Amar Singh has always fished in troubled waters, that is his game, a man who preys on the fears and insecurities of others. He was the mediator between the Bajaj brothers when a tumultuous war of words led to a family breakup. Akhilesh knows that the past is irredeemable and though he may lose this election, he is young enough to get into many scrums in the years to come.

In the theatre of the absurd called UP polity under the Yadav clan, MSY has played both Dashrath Naresh and Dhritarashtra at different times. Dhritarashtra because he is blinded by his love for his brother Shivpal and long-time consiglieri Amar Singh over affection for his son. At the same time, he has enacted the role of Dashrath Naresh for he has succumbed to Kaikeyi (Sadhana Yadav nee Gupta), who wants ascendancy for Prateek over Akhilesh as succession planning is decided in the fiercely feudal familia. Dhritarashtra’s half-brother Pandu is represented by his cousin Ramgopal who has chosen to align himself with Akhilesh. It is Tipuji who has won the hearts and minds of the youth in this ugly joust for Akhilesh like the ill-fated Abhimanyu has been trapped by the machinations of his uncles — Shivpal and Amar Singh.  The chakravyuh may not have consumed Akhilesh yet, but the constant duking and hectoring by Shivpal has undermined the young chief minister’s role.

The Yadav playbook is all about palace intrigues and putsch attempts. In a veritable mirror image of the Game of Thrones, the Yadav feud is self-destructive at one level, for it has eroded the party’s equity. Rife with dissension and sporadic verbal shell game exchanges, the Yadavs aren’t seen to be stable to govern UP. Nature, they say, abhors a vacuum, and so BMW (Behnji Maya Wati) and the BJP have entered the equation to make best use of the vacuum. In any case, Akhilesh’s own image remains unsullied, though the shenanigans of his vast array of uncles is fast resembling a shipwreck. For the Samajwadi family of socialists, the ship to power in 2017 may well have sailed. But the SP as a political formation cannot be ignored. Perhaps it will not retain power in Puttar Pradesh this time around, but Akhilesh’s popularity remains intact. Lawlessness and corruption have left a wasteland behind in their wake, and the squabbling family hasn’t exactly endeared itself to the populace. Mulayam’s genius was that he consolidated not just the Yadav but Muslim votebanks behind himself. His bickering brother Shivpal and the deeply crafty stratagems of Amar Singh have run circles around young Akhilesh, who has fought them tooth and nail. The difference between what you want and what you fear is the width of an eyelash. Humans are wired to overreach, Akhilesh wants to morph into Arjun from Abhimanyu as he nails the electorate with his arrow.